Radiant heaters are well known and used to provide heat to selected areas of a given space. These heaters may be used to heat spaces such as workshops, patios, terraces, and the like or for industrial purposes such as drying or treating materials to give only two examples.
Conventional radiant heaters include a radiant heat source and mounting elements in order to mount and position the heat source in a variety of ways so as to heat a particular object, surface area or other targets.
A drawback of the prior art radiant heaters is that the heat is not uniform throughout the target surface. Heating is not uniform as one moves away from the heat source. This creates hot points or surfaces which may be overheated and hence, uncomfortable to people on a patio or damaging to material. Furthermore, the heater is somewhat useless at the areas away from the heating device since the temperature is not sufficient for comfort or industrial utility depending on the use of that particular heater.
FIGS. 1 and 2 described hereinafter exemplify the above stated drawback. FIG. 1 is a graph showing a 3D heating profile and FIG. 11 is a 2D heating profile of a prior art mushroom-type heater depicted in FIGS. 8 through 10. FIG. 2 is a graph showing a 3D heating profile of a flat radiant heater. As can be ascertained from the foregoing graphs, heat is not uniformly distributed throughout a given surface area by these prior art heaters.
Attempts to address this drawback have been the use of more radiant heaters for the same surface area or the use of wider or longer radiant heat sources. Both attempts incurring greater costs.
Thus there remains a need to provide a heater that can radiate heat in a more uniform way throughout a target surface area.